A History of Ottoman Political Thought Up to the Early Nineteenth Century

(Ben Green) #1

Note on Transliteration and Citations


The transliteration of Ottoman names and texts is always a thorny problem. For
a book relying heavily on literary sources, the problem was even more acute,
since its subject required the transliteration not only of Ottoman Turkish but
also of Arabic and Persian phrases and the titles of works, some of which were
not composed in an Ottoman environment. For reasons of consistency, we
chose to use the Turkish alphabet and the generally-accepted modern Turkish
orthography (with as few diacritical marks as possible); for the same reasons,
we simplified published transliterations as well. As usual, terms that are now
established in English, such as pasha for paşa, vizier for vezir or Sharia for
şeriat, remain in their common forms. The names of Arab or Persian authors
are transliterated using the system established by the International Journal
of Middle East Studies (IJMES) (http://ijmes.chass.ncsu.edu/docs/TransChart
.pdf ). Titles of treatises in Arabic are given following the IJMES system when
the works are in Arabic or Persian, too, and following Ottoman vocalization
and transliteration when they are in Ottoman Turkish.
As the bulk of this book consists of detailed analysis of Ottoman texts, most
of which have been published, I have tried to give the relevant page references
as often as possible. In order not to encumber the book with innumerable foot-
notes, I have left these paginations in-line with a capital letter indicating the
initial of the editor; the editions used are cited in footnotes whenever the text
is first introduced.

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